The A*mazing Race: Not-so-subtle Nintendo advertisements from around the world

I want to know exactly who is in charge of Nintendo’s advertising department in Australia. Not content with putting an ad for Wii Fit Plus during virtually every commercial break, Nintendo and Southern Star Entertainment joined forces to bring audiences The Pursuit, a TV show that can only be described as The Amazing Race meets The Wizard.

Broadcast on the Nine network late last year, the show involves three pairs of people racing around various Australian cities armed with nothing but $100 and a Nintendo DSi. The teams are given various clues along the way, and while these are often presented in interesting ways (like pictures on an SD card that has to be inserted into the console), they seem to be usually solved just by looking up Google Maps or Wikipedia on the DSi’s internet browser. Of course this often results in the contestants madly waving their DSi around trying to find Wi-Fi reception.

Like The Amazing Race, The Pursuit also had a number of challenges players had to complete before they moved on in the competition. In keeping with the Nintendo theme, these generally involve playing some kind of Nintendo game, whether it be Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii or, strangely, fishing in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Outside of the challenges and the whole DSi thing, The Pursuit doesn’t have any other real Nintendo product placement. Still, it’s interesting that the show even exists, even if it was very short-lived. Don’t expect a second season any time soon.

It’s not the first time Nintendo has experimented with advertising in TV programs, though. Last year, Nintendo struck a deal to sponsor the TV show Britain’s Best Brain, a show heavily based off Nintendo’s own Brain Training series of games. British laws forbid product placement in TV programs, so the show wasn’t nearly as full of advertising as The Pursuit. The same can’t be said for Mexican TV show, Nintendomania, a program that, as the name suggests, was completely devoted to discussion of Nintendo and previews of upcoming games.

Even the Australian children’s game show, A*mazing, which I loved as a kid, I can now see as the massive Nintendo-sponsored obstacle course that it was. Just check out all the monitors in the background! If that’s not enough to convince you of Nintendo’s shameless advertising, then maybe the final round consisting of a fight to the death in Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country and many other classic 90’s Nintendo games (also Bubsy) to win the ultimate prize of a shiny new Game Boy will.

I’m sure there are plenty of other instances of Nintendo’s not-so-subtle advertising within TV programs out there. Does anyone have any other examples of the Big N’s adventures in TV promotion? Maybe Sony or Microsoft are just as guilty as they are? Drop a comment below. I’m interested to see what people dig up.

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